Dinner – Lie (2016)

Dinner is Danish producer and singer Anders Rhedin. Dinner leads a nomadic existence, dividing his time between Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Berlin. So far, Dinner has 3 EPs and a guided hypnosis tape under his belt. This April sees the release of his debut album Psychic Lovers. “Dinner’s music is about parties. And women. Late nights and early mornings in strange cities. But mainly it’s about magic and the communion with spirits,” Dinner says. “It’s like sexual Christian rock, really. But with out all the Christianity.”

Recorded in Copenhagen and LA, Dinner finished a version of Psychic Lovers after 4 months of intense work but decided to scrap everything and start over. “One morning in LA, as I was meditating in the garden, I saw this mental image of saturated, distorted light. Inside this texture was this emotional longing. And I instantly knew that I had to start over. I had to put this mental image into sound. That this new music would be different from my previous music, somehow.” The reworking of the album took an additional 5 months. Whether the finished album lives up to Dinner’s vision only Dinner knows.

Musically, the album exists in its own space between the 80’s, 90’s and the present. The songs are pop songs held together by somewhat idiosyncratic arrangements. Opener “Cool As Ice” sounds like the soundtrack to David Lynch directing Miami Vice with overdriven synthetic strings and an equally eerie and funky slap bass that slowly grow into a pop structure. “Turn Me On” invokes the feeling of Sade recorded on VHS fronted by Klaus Nomi’s baryton-possessed ghost, or a warped jingle from The Home Shopping Network. The song “Lie” has distinct Nico-esque undertones and John Cale-ish overtones wrapped in 80’s melancholy, while “Wake Up” and “The World” explore inverted 90’s Euro-pop. In the words of mix-engineer Filip Nicolic (Poolside), “The whole album sounds like Chimo Bayo produced by Marquis de Sade.” An even more concise definition of Dinner comes from label-mate Mac Demarco: “Great face, great body, great tunes.”